08 May 2018

NGS 2018 Day 2 Ends in Dutch Meet and Greet


My morning started with David Lambert's Researching Your New England Ancestors Online and in Repositories.  Lambert caught my attention when he invited people to stop by the NEHGS booth and ask questions.  He said, "as long as you don't ask for me to tell you everything about Samuel Poor of Newburyport, Ma".  Wait, what?  That is my ancestor.  I stopped by the booth a couple of times, but never when Lambert was there.  I will have to wait until July to ask him, when he comes to speak at the Abrams Foundation Seminar being held.

Even though I have been to New England to conduct research, I still have a lot of research to do. The take away from this session is not to reinvent the wheel when doing research in this area.  Use the wonderful resources in print and online such as The Great Migration Series, The Winthrop Fleet, New Englanders in the 1600's, Torrey's Marriage Records, and others.  

Yvette Hoitink was one of my must see and hear sessions that I picked before the conference.  I chose For Fortune and Faith: Emigration from the Netherlands in the 1800's.  I learned so much about the Netherlands during this session.  It focused on the history of the Netherlands, familial relationships, and reasons people left the Netherlands during this time.  My husband's family is one of the families that were part of this emigration.


The third session of day two was the time that I selected to walk through the exhibit hall.  I started in aisle one and continued until it was time for me to be at the Michigan Genealogical Council table.  I didn't get through the whole hall as I stopped and talked to a lot of vendors.  The highlights of my visit were:

  • Seeing my book, "Research in the States: Michigan" at the NGS booth.  I bought the Massachusetts and Rhode Island one.
  • Grabbing the Calhoun County guide from the Library of Michigan booth.  The Library of Michigan has guides for every county in Michigan.
  • Talking to my friends from Clayton Library, Houston, and checking on the library that I enjoyed researching in when I was visiting my son.
  • Finding out about Dutch Roots Tours and getting a wooden shoe key chain.  My family of six are looking forward to a future trip to the Netherlands and I would like to visit a few family areas and Jan Deelstra was a wealth of information.
  • Buying three magazines, Tracing Your Ancestors DNA and Genealogy, Tracing Your WWI Military Ancestors, and Tracing Your Civil War Ancestors from Moorshead Magazines.
  • Seeing a demo of Research Ties, an online research log that helps users organize (I heart organization!) their research. I want to explore this further and may sign up for it.
The afternoon started with D. Joshua Taylor's Fifteen Tools for Tracing Your New York Ancestors Online.  Many of my early Michigan ancestors migrated here from New York and I am always looking for ways to find them in records.  Taylor provided fifteen resources every New York researcher should know about.  Everything from Family Search to manuscripts to New York State Library and Archives, newspapers and more was presented.  I have a list of so much to check on, that I could spend the next year just on New York families.

4:00 p.m. rolled around and I couldn't believe how fast the day had gone.  I ended the day with Dr. Thomas W. Jones and Using Michigan Records to Reconstruct a New England Family.  One thing I have found over the years is that one knows what to expect from a Dr. Jones session-a well researched case study.  The best part of this was that he used a Michigan family that came from Vermont and he traced the family back to Vermont. Dr. Jones mentioned, "no one source is as bad as to overlook it and no source is as good as to follow it blindly"  It is always a good feeling to see the work of a well respected genealogist and know you are on the right track with your research. It was a great way to end the session day. 

The day actually ended with a Dutch Meet and Greet that was organized by Yvette Hoitink and Elaine Zimmerman.  Those with Dutch ancestry met in the lobby of the Amway Grand Plaza and chatted about where in the Netherlands our ancestors lived.  I was the impostor of the group because it is actually my husbands family who is from the Netherlands.  However, I did find out that Luyendyk, the original spelling of our name, is pronounced Line dyke.  We ended the meet and greet with dinner at a local restaurant, Z's.

1 comment:

  1. Brenda, I wasn't at NGS so I appreciate your recap of sessions, exhibit hall offerings, and ideas. Best of luck with your book!

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